"Do you speak English?" was the next question, put with a perfect accent in my own language.
"Sure," I replied, with what I meant to be a very correct twang. But it didn't appear to impress him as much as I could have wished; and after regarding me curiously for a moment or two he rose, got a volume of Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, and laid it open before me, asking me to try and read a passage.
I looked at it earnestly and gave it up as hopeless.
But he was too many for me. "Well, I'll read it to you and get you to repeat it after me." And he did read it and I had to repeat the words in such American as I could manage. "Thank you," he said as he closed the book and put it away again. And then another long pause followed.
I recalled Hoffnung's disturbing words—that the Baron would have something to tell me I might not like. He had certainly made that good, and I was beginning to be abominably troubled about the run of things when he started in again.
"And so you wish to join our Secret Service?" he asked with the abrupt shift of subject which worried me.
"Herr Hoffnung told me so, but——" and I smiled vacantly.
"Do you imagine that a man without a memory would be of much use to us?"
"I'm afraid not, sir; but to tell the truth, I have no sort of desire to do it. The doctors at Rotterdam told me I should recover my memory in time, and if I could have a good rest and just be absolutely quiet for a time it is all I wish."
He nodded, not unkindly, and then suddenly bent on me the keenest look I have ever seen in any man's eyes and asked: "Are you sure you mean that?"